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When worn properly, the garment provides protection against temptation and evil. Wearing the garment is an outward expression of an inward commitment to follow the Savior. – (First Presidency letter, 5 Nov. 1996).

The garments must be worn day and night.

Mormons are allowed to have sex, (married of course) swim, and shower without the garments, but they should be immediately worn again, as soon as possible. The prophet and the first presidency of the LDS church are all old men in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. They are not about to advise women on the pleasures of wearing garment bottoms and getting a period, or having a baby. We figure it out.

They make maternity garments, (belly and boob pouches!) and nursing garments (the boob pouches are designed with flap, to give access to the breast once the nursing bra comes down). They come in different fabrics, and necklines. I found them all to be drastically uncomfortable. I was painfully sensitive to lace, and even the simplest styles had trim that rubbed me raw. It was always hot, even in the winter months, wearing an extra layer under my clothes. I hated the way the fabric bunched up around the underwire of my bra, and caused my bra straps to slip around.

I hated sleeping in them, I hated golfing in them, I hated never being able to undress or dress in a locker room at the gym.

But, despite the physical discomfort, I wore them diligently, faithfully. I tried so desperately to embrace the life of a married mormon woman. I read material about the garments, their sacred nature, the blessing I would get from wearing them. I taught young, impressionable preteen girls about the importance of wearing temple garments. I told them how sacred and special they were. I left the church on those particular Sundays always wondering if they recognized how resolved I was in convincing my own heart. I wanted my new husband to see me as a valiant, faithful woman. I wanted Heavenly Father to validate my efforts with a boost of faith.

After our daughter Carly was born, we moved to California. I became pregnant with Lydia just six months after Carly’s birth. As I fed and cared for one baby girl, and grew in my womb another. My spiritual crisis flourished, growing as fast as the new life inside me.

Garments are worn as a reminder of the covenants and oaths taken inside the temple. They are to serve as a constant reminder of who you are, what your purpose is on earth, and the morals and standards you are striving to live. They keep you dressing modestly and behaving accordingly. Putting the garments on your body is like dressing in the armor of God.

These were the true reasons the mormon underwear was hard for me to wear.

It was an oppressive, constant weighing reminder of who I was – a latter-day saint (LDS).

I would step out of a shower in the morning and stare at the blurred outline of my body in the fogged up mirror.

I was disappearing.

I pulled the garments on, and the woman in the mirror became visible as the fog cleared. She looked like all the women in my life…my mother, my grandmother, my aunts and cousins, my ancestors.

It felt like chain mail under my clothes.

My underwear was immutable evidence that I was trapped, encapsulated in fraudulence. I hated when Rick would see me in them each day, knowing my garments were a reassurance for him that I was doing it. I was complying with the temple promises. It felt like a bold face lie.

I wanted to fall asleep at night, his skin and my skin unsheathed from our armor…my raw self and his. But it was against the rules, to spend a night sleeping in our bed, holding onto each other without the barrier between.

The lightweight cotton was becoming so heavy, I could barely get dressed in the morning.

It seemed that each passing day, as my belly grew larger, so did my discontent. I had managed to avoid buying maternity garments while pregnant with Carly, eeking by with my regular sizes and the nursing garments afterwards. But this second baby, fast on the heels of the first, changed my body quicker. The garments became uncomfortably tight, rolling up over my abdomen. Rick would ask me almost daily if I had remembered to order maternity garments, and I would always respond with, “tomorrow.” I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I had respect for the garments, for the people who wear them, for their sacred and spiritual meaning for my loved ones. And there came a point where I could not put them on.

I had outgrown them.

I only had a month or two before Lydia would be born… I sat on the edge of my bed, Carly calling for me in her crib, and I could not put them on my body. I stopped wearing them.

Rick began to ask about it as gently as he could, and I would shrug it off, as if I simply forgot. Both of us knew forgetting was not possible. I could feel his fear building as the force of our spiritual storm began to build and take shape. I would try to be nonchalant, tell him, “tomorrow,” and almost gag on my words. His disappointed eyes and my guilt filled me up like wet cement.

In that last month, Carly, with her imploring blue eyes, would lift my shirt and pat my bare belly, press against me. She would squeeze my fingers and leave wet kisses on my cheeks. My daughter. My little girl, watching my every move.

And inside me grew a fierce and fearless Lydia, straining against my insides, running out of room, ready to come into the world and become.

And… there was…me.

A burgeoning woman who knew that the time was coming. The moment where soon, I would no longer be able to hold myself in.

In the green of a blooming spring, amongst the awakening world, it happened.

“Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into [God’s] presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.” – LDS President Boyd K. Packer

I better just get the underwear thing out of the way. I am not sure that the necessity of special underwear in order to find eternal salvation is something I can just zip on past. It’s a topic that needs addressing. Not just because people in general are fascinated with the idea that mormons wear secret underwear, (they do) but also because it was certainly a huge part of my overwhelming unhappiness as a mormon woman, and a painful hurdle to overcome.

But.

I dread it….writing about this part. Because it’s absolutely sacred to the mormon population. And while I will poke fun, be irreverent, and unafraid to talk about the church’s darker, more damaging side… it is not my intention to hurt or disrespect LDS people.

I don’t believe in the church anymore. And the secrecy surrounding many of the beliefs and teachings were damaging and hurtful to me, and many others. There is so much secrecy, and so much fear in talking honestly and openly about real experience. There is no safe forum for mormon people to express their feelings of doubt or fear or disagreement. I have been filled with much hesitation to share some of these more sacred elements out of respect for the LDS people, out of my desire to not feel hated and condemned by them, my own family members especially. I squirm in my seat as I write this. It has taken me a long time to arrive here, to this moment when I believe that I deserve to share it, to own it, to call it out, just as they will spread their message and try to find people to blindly follow their faith.

I will share the sacred parts… the temple, the underwear, with intention…not to desecrate something holy, but to own my story and shed the shame and propensity to hide behind propriety at the cost of my soul, my spirit. It is all I can do.

l love mormons.

I was one. I am married to someone who was molded and shaped into an incredible father and husband by the LDS faith. I was a fifth generation mormon, and almost all of my ancestors and living relatives are still faithful LDS people. Mormons are some of the most generous, caring, loving, and thoughtful people you will meet. They are resourceful and energetic and loving and they will bring you a casserole and a pan of brownies, help you move, jump your dead battery on the side of the road, or visit you when you are sick without pause or reciprocation.

So. Deep breath.

To start with the basics, yes, mormons do in fact wear special underwear. Mitt Romney? He wears the undies. So does his wife. Any faithful, active adult member of the LDS community with a church resume like the Romney’s must wear the garments, or they would be deemed unworthy of holding those important church positions. Children do not wear garments…you must be 18, found worthy, and go through sacred and very secret rituals and ceremonies in an LDS temple in order to purchase and wear garments.

-Denver, Colorado Temple. The temple I first received my garments.

Mormons believe the underwear is absolutely sacred and is not supposed to be shown to others or spoken about to outsiders. The underwear is worn to keep one modest, serve as a reminder of the promises made to God, and when worn faithfully and correctly can be protective. There are hundreds of stories floating in mormonland and even shared over the pulpit about people who were physically protected in accidents or fire by wearing the garments. These are the stories that confirm the notion to outsiders that mormons wear “magical underwear.”

Mormon underwear is all white, a symbol of purity. The men wear a basic white shirt, and the bottoms look like white boxer briefs but the legs are lengthened to a few inches above the knee. There are secret symbolic markings embroidered into various places on the bottoms and tops. The markings are small, white and not very noticeable. The women wear tops that look like tank tops with capped sleeves. They come in a variety of neck lines, but they all come up high enough to modestly cover indecent cleavage exposure. For women with bigger breasts, the tops are sewn with boob pouches, of sorts, so that the top will fit smoothly over all the skin. The catch is, women must wear the sacred garment under the bra. Ladies will understand the supreme discomfort that this may cause the well endowed LDS. I don’t care how smooth you try to make those boob pouches, they are simply not good enough to prevent bunching, puckering, and movement of the bra in all the wrong places. The bottoms look like white spandex, that go down to a few inches above the knee, to prevent scandalous immodest flashing of the upper thigh. The female garments have the same markings as the men… a strange phenomenon of equality within the faith, not often replicated.

Thankfully, the design has changed over time, as they used to be one-piece numbers, with long sleeves, long pants…and a crotch flap. These beauties may still be available for worthy purchasers. Awesome. The one-piecers were a piece of history my mother loved to remind me of as we commiserated about the hot misery of those boob pouches. And despite our shared discomfort, the sacred power of those garments held tremendous control over our lives. The influence the underwear has in daily LDS life is hard to articulate, and the guilt and perceived wickedness over letting them go was immense. The decision to slip on a pair of good ol’fashioned bikini briefs caused almost paralyzing anxiety at times, paralleled only in my emotions now, as I let go to the fears associated with writing about the underwear.

Releasing that fear was a challenge, when I am going to burn in hell for writing about this. Actually, I don’t think most mormons believe in “burning in hell.” Hell is called outer darkness, and is rarely spoken of.

I have come far enough to have let go of that belief, the idea that the kind of skivvies I wear is important to God, or a measure of my worthiness as a human being. Can there be a heavier weight, a more taxing exercise, than a continual critical measuring of self worth? The memory of that measurement still makes it hard for me to breathe, it presses in on my throat, my voice disappears.

Floating out here in the “outer darkness,” I feel so much lighter. And I marinate in this idea:

We are all worthy.

Always.

The worthiness is brilliant and it’s still flowering within me.

The projection of strength, faith, and sacrifice is paramount in the mormon community, and even within the family circle there can be a thick communication barrier. It’s a barrier that still snakes it’s way through me, coiling around my darkest places, the most raw fears. I know that LDS people will feel disrespected and offended by the things I write here, about my own personal experience as a mormon woman. I see the fear in my mother and father’s eyes when I tell them about the things I will write here, for the world to read. For their family members to read. But their discomfort it is unavoidable,…inevitable, if I am to accomplish what I have set out to do…to find my voice and be unafraid to use it. That voice has been bound and gagged for too long by the remaining vestiges of mormon unmentionables. I have set out to peel away the layers of my self, to discover what is underneath, and scrape that away too.

When all the layers are gone, the only thing remaining will be what is at the core of us all.

God. Love.

My hope is that my willingness to be raw, naked and condemned by people I love will help someone else find the God within themselves too.

I will send this small nugget of release into the blog-iverse with the promise of more details to come. The next layer must come off. I’m just going to catch my breath first.